Members of the American Booksellers Association participating in the Constant Contact affinity program [4] will soon be receiving rebate checks. The checks are being sent to bookstores that signed up to use Constant Contact's suite of tools to create and send compelling e-mail newsletters during the first year of the program, which began in April 2005.

A bookstore's rebate is equivalent to the average monthly fee paid to Constant Contact, prorated for the amount of time the store was in the program. (For example, if Bookstore A signed up in November 2005 -- 6 months into the program -- and the store's average monthly fee paid to Constant Contact was $100, the rebate check will equal $50.) For stores that also participate in BookSense.com, this year the rebate will be equivalent to double the average monthly fee. A store's monthly fee is based on the number of unique addresses on its list.

Constant Contact enables booksellers to easily create professional looking e-mail newsletters, collect visitor e-mail addresses and interests, import in-house permission-based e-mail addresses, target e-mails to specific audiences, manage lists and track results, and more. The program is also CAN-SPAM compliant.

ABA's business affinity programs [5], designed to help independent booksellers compete in a rapidly changing marketplace, include discounted credit card processing, low-cost business insurance, discounts on small-package and freight shipping, and more.